Abstract

&e essay depicts the development of the San Saba district, designed by #uadrio Pirani and built by the Istituto per le Case Popolari [Institute for Council Housing] in Rome between 1906 and 1923. Studying the strategies and the progress in designing the district, it is possible to compare the typological and stylistic features of social housing in Rome at the beginning of the twentieth century. In promoting a new urban layout, endorsed by the city council and by the Mayor Ernesto Nathan (1907-1913), several social housing programs were supported as an opportunity to develop an important research on housing, to couple the public decorum with the functional needs of modern social housing. &e San Saba project, which was characterized by the composition with villini [detached houses] or casette economiche [low-cost houses] and houses with an inner courtyard, constitutes one of the most successful examples of an organic relationship between functional aspects, formal vocations and social demands